Giving Compass' Take:

• Jon Deane, writing for The 74, discusses why schools should be required to make school data accessible for parents and their children to make the best decisions about future educational opportunities. 

• What are the most substantial barriers for families to access school data? 

• Learn why school data is also helpful for policymakers to help improve school districts.


As college application season kicks into high gear, a myth prevails that only privileged families work hard to crunch data and debate the pros and cons to ensure their children can get the education they need. But new research debunks this myth, conclusively showing that the very families who have been underserved by our educational system, often low-income black and Hispanic families, are setting their sights high and prioritizing educational opportunities.

A recent study by Learning Heroes found that 84 percent of African-American parents, 85 percent of Hispanic parents and 74 percent of white parents expect their child to graduate from a two- or four-year college. Similarly, in a GreatSchools survey of over 6,000 parents, we found that 79 percent of low-income parents report they help with their child’s education daily or multiple times a day, compared with 74 percent of more affluent parents. These efforts are crucial, but in order for children to gain better educational opportunities, they need more than great expectations and the daily homework grind; they need their parents to be able to access accurate information. To know how their children are doing. To know how schools in their community are doing.

Without this basic information, parents have few ways to fight decades of bad policies, school spending decisions and a host of other systemic failures impacting their children.

So how do we offer parents from underserved communities the information they need to flex their power?

First, we need to raise the bar on the data itself. State education agencies have made great strides in the quality and availability of school-level data over the past several years, but all states should implement best practices to make their data as transparent as possible.

Read the full article about the power of access to school data by Jon Deane at The 74.